It's Hardcore History.

Attendum.

I first made the acquaintance of Henry Sledge after he got in touch with me, after we did a show where I had mentioned or quoted his dad.

And we stayed in touch since then.

And I don't remember if he was already writing a book or just planning to or if he was in the middle of it.

But he, there was a book involved.

And I, along with, you know, lots and lots and lots of other people he talked to,

enthusiastically encouraged him to continue on or to write the book.

And so I also said when you write it or when it's done, please come on the show and we'll talk about it.

Now, if you don't know who Henry's dad is, first of all, his name is sometimes on the cover of the book uh or books that that he wrote

uh he'll be called e b sledge but his name was eugene sledge uh he's he's been made famous

more since his death because one of the characters in hbo's series uh on the pacific war

dramatization is this guy.

But like many other people, I became aware of him after his book with the old breed at Palo Lu and Okinawa first appeared in the 1980s.

I don't remember when I read it, 83, 84, 85, somewhere in there.

And then you started seeing this gentleman on a bunch of different documentaries and whatnot on the Pacific War.

And so you've got a chance to sort of get a feel for who the guy was, even in addition to the writing.

He was just a really interesting, deep man.

It was such a wonderful representation of the various kind of people who end up in the military.

Now, of course, still, but even more so back in the day when uh everybody went

i mean virtually everybody went when you had wars on where they're drafting the population

it's a much larger cross section of the male group of people than you were maybe getting when

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